An Introduction

What Will Be in the Fields Tomorrow? is an informal script intended for public group reading that brings people together in a common experience. Fields is conversations among farmers that translate the power of their voices and experiences. Fields is entertaining and educational, and at its best, this group reading experience can provide a starting point for continuing the conversation through facilitated dialogue and community programs.

Fields is a series of vignettes structured as inter-related conversations and statements among 10 - 13 individuals. The script can be used as a whole or excerpted to focus on issues or address time. The full length script is approximately 60 minutes; an abridged version is 38 minutes.

A group reading can be done around a large table with participants reading to one-another with no practice, or, with scripts-in-hand, presented from a stage to an audience with few props and limited technical support.

These resources will help you use the script and do readers' theatre with your constituency and in your community.

Using the curriculum can also be an effective follow-up activity. The six-lesson design allows the facilitator to choose one or multiple topics to to explore further and continue the dialogue. Each lesson includes a facilitator packet, a learner's packet, and PowerPoint slides. Topics span from a basic introduction to food, farming, and community to strategies for supporting sustainable food systems.

Annotated book and film lists identify resources that you can use to develop continuing activities in your community.

"I don't see any future for the farm. I have to wonder about what's going to happen. I don't want to sell, and then sometimes I think we should, but I don't know. I don't think my father would want us to sell, I feel it's special to us because it came down from my grandfather to my father to us."

Opal Ragsdale, Jacksonville, Texas - Cherokee County
from People Sustaining the Land by Cynthia Vagnetti, 2002.